The Naked Time (Episode 07)

Spock and Tormolen wear shower curtains while examining a department store mannequin. The episode gets better.

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UPDATE May 8, 2025 — Christopher L. Bennett in this column's comments points us to an April 2023 FactTrek.com blog article exploring the writing history behind “The Naked Time.” Click here to read the excellent column by Michael Kmet and Maurice Molyneaux.

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John D.F. Black was a 33-year old established television writer when he won an award in March 1966 from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for his Mr. Novak episode, “With a Hammer in His Hand, Lord, Lord!” Mr. Novak was a series about an idealistic English teacher at a Los Angeles high school. The episode's plot was about Novak trying to learn the identity of three students who had roughed up another teacher.

Black's award was in the category of Dramatic-Episodic. That same night, speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison won an award in the Anthology category for his Outer Limits episode, “Demon with a Glass Hand.”

Most Star Trek fans are well aware of Ellison's future connection to the original series, credited as the writer of “City on the Edge of Forever.” We'll revisit that controversial episode in a future column.

John D.F. Black, however, is known only to the most hardcore of Star Trek fans.

At the WGA award party, Gene Roddenberry approached Black about coming to work for him on Star Trek. Black was unfamiliar with science fiction, but became both an associate producer and story consultant, balancing those duties with Bob Justman. In his memoir Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Justman wrote that Roddenberry decided Black needed to loosen up, so Gene played a practical joke on him. This was in late April 1966, when Star Trek was still in pre-production. Roddenberry recruited his paramour Majel Barrett to attempt seducing Black.

If you've read the earlier columns, you know that Barrett was dropped from the series after the first pilot, “The Cage.” Roddenberry schemed to hire her for the series anyway in a different role. Gene asked John to interview Barrett for possible employment. Roddenberry and other staff members burst in on them as Majel sat on John's lap and began to undo her blouse buttons.

Justman and his co-author Herb Solow wrote that Black struggled to write his first script, “The Naked Time,” while juggling that with his story consultant responsibilities reviewing other submitted scripts.

In These are the Voyages by Marc Cushman, Black recalled that he took offense to Roddenberry rewriting his first draft. According to Black, the WGA rules at the time prohibited a producer from rewriting a script until after the writer submitted a second draft. He said he had a verbal agreement with Roddenberry that his scripts would not be touched until after he'd written two drafts and a polish. Black objected to Roddenberry not only rewriting his drafts but those of other free-lance writers. Black's secretary (and future wife) believed that Roddenberry was drunk while rewriting John's first draft, due to the sloppiness of the written notes and his slurring voice on a Dictaphone recording.

Roddenberry's defense was that he had a unique vision for the show and its characters. The show needed to maintain a schedule; he couldn't afford to wait for his writers to perfect a script, because he needed those scripts to go into pre-production.

According to Cushman, some of Gene's changes added “ham-fisted changes in dialogue, but there are also many positive additions to the script.” Black created an assistant for Doctor McCoy named Nurse Ducheau. Roddenberry changed the character's name to Christine Chapel, intending to cast Majel Barrett in the role with a hair color change to blonde. In this episode, she's only called (and credited as) “Christine.”

Black eventually left the show mid-way through production of the first season. In a 2001 interview, Black said that what he liked most about this script was the lack of a villain. In that sense, it compares somewhat to the fourth Star Trek film, The Voyage Home. The threat there was an alien probe looking to communicate with extinct humpback whales.

Cushman also wrote about another time pressure, lining up a director for the episode. By May 1966, Roddenberry had hired nine directors for the first nine episodes. Bernard Kowalsky was slotted to direct “The Naked Time” but was already booked on another show. Unable to find another director, Roddenberry recruited Marc Daniels, who was to direct the preceding episode, “The Man Trap.” When filming of that episode ended three hours early, Daniels immediately began filming “The Naked Time” with the actors already on the set.

The premise of the episode doesn't fit any of the ideas in Roddenberry's March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline used to pitch the show to the networks. It appears that the original premise came from Black.

Up to this point, the episodes had been captain-centric. You'll recall that Roddenberry's original premise was that each episode was to be a recollection of an adventure as told by the captain. The lead character can carry the show only so far, so “The Naked Time” was an opportunity to flesh out the supporting cast of characters.

The writer's tool for this episode is not unique. Each character, due to what's called in the biz a MacGuffin, is stripped down to his or her base emotions. Because the characters are trapped on the starship, these base emotions are going to collide.

For a budget-conscious show, this is known as a “bottle episode” meaning most or all scenes are filmed on existing sets with already contracted actors. In this case, our starship is metaphorically the ship-in-a-bottle. We've discussed in prior columns how Desilu and NBC closely scrutinized production of Star Trek, believing that a science fiction show couldn't stay within budget.

One has to give credit to the cast for selling some truly cheap props. Spock examines a frozen corpse that's clearly a department store mannequin. Their hazmat suits were cut from a shower curtain pattern.

Star Trek's strengths were its cast and its writers. “The Naked Time” has some truly dumb moments, especially in the teaser, but it's one of fandom's most popular episodes.

So let's dive in.

The Enterprise has been dispatched to recover a scientific party from a frozen world in its death throes. We're shown stock footage from … somewhere. Spock and Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen beam down in hideous hazmat suits that are clearly ineffective because the headgear doesn't even attach to the rest of the suit. Tormolen can reach under and scratch his nose, which maу explain why he's only a J.G. The hazmat suits were made out of shower curtains, according to Marc Cushman.

All the members of the science team are dead. The frozen female is portrayed by a department store manneuqin. Leonard Nimoy and Stewart Moss sell it as best they can. Director Marc Daniels doesn't even bother to find a camera angle concealing the mannequin's face. One has to wonder if he was sending a message.

Tormolen removes his glove to scratch his nose, so we're assured he will get what he deserves. Particularly disrespectful is his placing the glove atop the head of the frozen console operator.

He places his exposed hand on the console. We see an animated red liquid jump onto his hand. That couldn't have been cheap in an otherwise cheaply produced episode, so kudos for that.

Dumbass then sticks the exposed hand under his face mask to smell it. Tormolen really deserves to die. Spock re-enters the room and warns Tormolen not to expose himself. So to speak.

Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen, an early candidate for the 2266 Darwin Awards.

On his wrist communicator (a predecessor of the ones used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture?), Spock tells Kirk, “It's like nothing we've dealt with before.” According to Cushman, this is one of the “ham-fisted” lines added by Roddenberry to Black's script.

Thus concludes one of the more embarrassing teasers in the original series.

Spock and Tormolen beam up. Scotty activates a decontamination beam — just the lights flashing — which should have removed the contamination. If it did, we'd have no story.

Kirk orders the landing party to “Medicine.” (Formerly called Dispensary, also Sickbay.) McCoy's scans find nothing. Bones comments derisively about Spock's green blood, an early effort by the writing staff to create the banter between the two that will become a show staple. Kirk orders Spock to study the “tapes” recording during the away mission — a choice of words reflective of its time.

Majel Barrett makes her first appearance as Nurse Chapel. Bones calls her “Christine.” So that name is established.

The “tapes” show nothing, but Spock notes that the instruments would only show what they're designed to register.

Kirk says that “Earth science” needs a close-up measurement of the planet's death. The terms “Federation” and “Starfleet” still have yet to be introduced.

An obviously unwell Tormolen goes to the rec room for a meal. Sulu and Riley (his first appearance) enter. Riley says that Sulu was trying to interest him in botany, a callback to the prior episode, “The Man Trap,” in which Sulu maintained a botany lab. In the second pilot, Sulu was an astrophysicist. Tormolen pulls a table knife on Sulu, then stabs himself with it. The infection transfers to Sulu and Riley.

The second act begins with Sulu at the helm and Riley at navigation. Both are scratching their infected hands. Not a good place for them to be.

In any case, we can see that this is going to spread through the ship, so not much sense going into detail.

Tormolen dies, becoming the fifth crew member to die on screen. (Four died in “The Man Trap.”) We've yet to lose a redshirt. Chapel says to McCoy, “He's dead, doctor.” In future episodes, Bones is the one delivering that line.

After Spock relieves Riley of duty, he assigns Uhura to navigation. This is the second straight episode where we see Uhura at a post other than communications. Later in the episode, Uhura takes command of the bridge. But in future episodes, Uhura's role is diminished to opening hailing frequencies, one reason why Nichelle Nichols almost left the show. Later in the episode, Janice Rand takes the helm, giving Grace Lee Whitney's character a more prominent role.

Spock nerve-pinches Sulu, the second time we see Spock use the grip. George Takei sells it by collapsing to the floor as if he'd been turned off, but also credit Leonard Nimoy for the casual way he applies the pinch as if it's barely an effort. Kirk comments, “I'd like you to teach me that sometime.”

Riley sabotages engineering, introducing yet another writer's staple — a countdown. Spock informs us that the Enterprise has less than 20 minutes before the ship spirals into the atmosphere. Our characters will collide with one another as the clock ticks.

Scotty labors in a Jeffries Tube, trying to cut off Riley's control of engineering. This is the first time we see a Jeffries Tube, named after the show's production designer Matt Jeffries.

On his way to assist Scott, Spock encounters a crewman with a paint brush who has written LOVE MANKIND on a corridor wall. In an early draft, Black wrote that the crewman painted a mustache on Spock's face, causing the Vulcan to burst into tears. (How the crewman got Spock to hold still that long is unexplained …) In his memoir I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy wrote that this scene was “a pointless exercise in stripping the dignity from him — and it also contradicted everything I knew about him.” Nimoy asked Black to rewrite the scene, but Black said there wasn't time. Nimoy then went to Roddenberry, who had Black rewrite the scene the way Leonard wanted.

The prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contradicts the Spock-Chapel relationship defined by this episode.

In the revision, Christine takes Spock's hand and expresses her love for him, transferring the virus. (In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Spock-Chapel romance is quite robust, contradicting what was established in this episode.) With time for only one take, Nimoy gives a performance that defines the character for all eternity. Finding an empty briefing room, Spock breaks down and weeps in private. Nimoy's fan mail skyrocketed after this episode, which also gave him the leverage to demand more from the production and the studio.

Spock's intermix formula implodes the engines, causing the Enterprise to travel backwards in time. An early concept was that this was to be the jumping-off point for what eventually became “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” when the ship found itself above the 1960s United States. The two-parter idea was abandoned, but the episode would be produced later in the first season. The Enterprise regressed 71 hours, suggesting the crew could have observed themselves in orbit around Psi 2000, but Kirk decides to proceed to their next assignment.

Roddenberry recycled “The Naked Time” for Star Trek: The Next Generation, in an episode called “The Naked Now.” The Enterprise-D encountered a similar virus and symptoms. John D.F. Black was given a partial writing credit for that episode. D.C. Fontana rewrote that script at Roddenberry's direction, but he rewrote her draft, inserting sexually charged scenes. The android Data was inexplicably affected by the virus. Fontana had her name removed, replaced by a pseudonym, J. Michael Bingham.

Fun fact … As the Enterprise plunges deeper into the atmosphere, the planet appears to be spinning faster. This would have been consistent with orbital mechanics. The closer an object is to a gravitational source, the faster must be its velocity to equal the gravitational pull and remain in orbit. The International Space Station, for example, orbits Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles. It must maintain a velocity of about 17,500 miles per hour to avoid falling back into the atmosphere. Geosynchronous satellites, which orbit at an altitude of about 22,000 miles, travel at a velocity of about 7,000 miles per hour.

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Sources:

“Writers Guild Honors 18 Members for Work,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1966, Part V, Page 12.

John D.F. Black Interview, Part 1, StarTrek.com, 2001.

John D.F. Black Interview, Part 2, StarTrek.com, 2001.

Mark Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013).

Leonard Nimoy, I Am Spock (New York: Hyperion, 1995).

Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York: Pocket Books, 1996).

The Man Trap (Episode 06)

An early NBC ad for “Star Trek.” Although the promo said September 15, NBC actually aired it a week early on September 8, 1966. Video source: TrekkieChannel YouTube channel.

The Star Trek “crown jewels” reside today in university libraries. At UCLA are the personal papers of creator Gene Roddenberry and associate producer Bob Justman. Showrunner Gene Coon's papers are at the University of Wyoming. Desliu executive Oscar Katz's papers are at the University of Maryland. Some founding fathers long ago sold off at auction their personal papers and other Star Trek memorabilia.

For researchers, none of it is in one place and, for the most part, unavailable online due to various copyright rules. I'd love to read through Roddenberry's papers, but a 3,000 mile trip to UCLA is not practical.

I have, however, found the next best thing.

In 2013, author Marc Cushman published a trilogy of books covering the show's original three-season run. Cushman had access to Roddenberry's and Justman's papers before they went to UCLA. Collectively called These Are The Voyages, I've acquired the trilogy and will cite them where used as an authoritative source.

I also found the TV Writing website, which is a PDF collection of scripts for Star Trek and other TV shows. Click here for the available TOS scripts. Not all scripts are available, but “The Man Trap” is, and so we plunge into this column's episode.

“The Man Trap” was originally a title for a very different concept. In Roddenberry's March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline used to pitch the show to the networks, he listed a number of “story springboards.” One was called “The Man Trap.”

THE MAN TRAP. A desert trek story, taking members of our band from one point on a planet to another. But what appears to be a pleasant totally earthlike and harmless world, rapidly develops into a hundred miles of fear and suspicion as Captain April and crew begin to encounter strange apparitions. Actually more than apparitions, these are wish-fulfillment traps which become as real as flesh and blood. Whatever a man wants most will appear before him, i.e., water, food, a female, a long-dead parent, gold, or even a way to power. The traps become increasingly subtle to the point where our crew nearly destroys itself out of a total inability to separate the reality they must have from the apparitions which will destroy them.

A whiff of this premise remains in “The Man Trap” — and in other episodes, such as “The Cage” — but it sounds more like “Shore Leave,” which will be produced later in the first season. The episode that aired with the title “The Man Trap” is about an alien version of a chameleon that alters its appearance to whatever might attract prey.

Although this was the fourth first-season episode to be produced, it was the first to air. In their memoir Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Desilu executive Herb Solow and Star Trek associate producer Bob Justman wrote that NBC wanted the first aired episode to be simple for the viewing audience to understand. Justman wrote, “I suspected the NBC people wanted 'Man Trap,' because it was scarier and more exploitable than the others.” It took place on a “strange new world” as promised by the opening narrative, and featured a monster creature as an antagonist.

According to Marc Cushman, the captain's logs had yet to be written when the episode was filmed. After watching a rough cut of the episode, Justman sent Roddenberry a memo advising, “… since this is liable to be our first or second show on the air, I think it would be wise to establish where we are and what we are doing over these shots.” Roddenberry agreed, and said he was writing it.

The script was originally assigned to veteran TV writer Lee Erwin, who had written “To Set It Right” for Roddenberry's last series, The Lieutnant. That episode was notable not only for depicting racism within the US Marine Corps, but also for the on-screen debut of Nichelle Nichols in a supporting role.

Unlike many of the writers Roddenberry recruited for the first season, Erwin had no science fiction literature background. Among his many credits were the amateur detective series Mr. and Mrs. North, the family adventure Western Circus Boy, and the scuba-diving action series Sea Hunt.

According to Marc Cushman's research, Erwin was the one who came up with the idea of a salt-sucking vampire, as well as the ability to fool its victims with illusions. But Roddenberry and Justman felt the premise needed more — more action, and more depth to its antagonist.

This was where George Clayton Johnson came in. Johnson had written seven episodes of The Twilight Zone among many other non-genre scripts. He told Roddenbery about his Twilight Zone episode, “The Four of Us Are Dying,” which had a person who could change his appearance. He coupled that with the notion of a creature who was the last of its kind, such as the nearly extinct buffalo.

Roddenberry paid Erwin a cancellation fee and reassigned the script to Johnson. According to Cushman, Johnson struggled with script revisions, in part because he was trying to honor the opening narrative's promise to explore strange new worlds. He and associate producer John D.F. Black debated how soon the plot should transfer from the planet surface to the Enterprise. It's also important to keep in mind that — as with other hired writers, even Roddenberry, Justman, and Black — everyone was still struggling with the creation of the Star Trek universe and its characters.

We discussed in earlier columns that Roddenberry's original format had each episode being told by the captain as a reminiscence of an earlier adventure. The stories so far — the two pilots and the three earlier episodes — were all captain-centric. This is the first episode that gives any significant story time to a different character — in this case, Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy. Spock's turn will have to wait, because NBC had encouraged Roddenberry to tone down Spock's presence, fearing he might appear too satanic for Bible Belt audiences.

As he did with most scripts, Roddenberry added his own final polish to Johnson's script. None of the changes are fundamental, but they reflect an effort by Gene to pacify the network. Marc Cushman, who reviewed all the various drafts, concluded:

Roddenberry's rewrite … was more in line with what NBC was asking for, putting emphasis on action/adventure … with a monster. Johnson's version had just a bit more heart.

Cushman wrote that, “'The Man Trap' is a study in loneliness. This is not a simple Man against Beast tale, but more so Man against Himself.” For me, I view the episode as a question of sentience. If the creature is sentient, does it deserve mercy?

Let's begin with the definition of sentience.

The Sentience Institute preaches the concept of the moral circle, which refers to “the boundary around entities that are granted moral consideration.”

At Sentience Institute, we are mainly interested in the societal moral circle. This captures the laws, policies, and norms that are intended to protect the interests of different entities. We envision a society where all sentient beings, that is, beings with the capacity for positive and negative experiences, are included in the inner moral circle. Note that this does not mean we think all sentient entities should be treated in exactly the same way. Different entities have different interests. Being in the inner circle means an entity’s specific set of interests are given full moral consideration, not that they are treated in exactly the same way as others in the circle.

Sentience Science views the question in the context of the animal rights movement.

Agreeing on the premise that sentient beings are capable of experiencing pain and suffering, most humans would further agree that it is morally wrong to inflict unnecessary pain or suffering. It may be persuasively argued that humans should not restrict our scope of protection to only sentient beings, because non-sentient things — trees and rivers, for example — also have intrinsic value. The primary importance of sentience as a moral measuring stick, however, is based on the idea that most people would agree that beings who can suffer should not be made to suffer unnecessarily.

Perhaps our question is not sentience, but sapience. Here's one person's definition:

Sentience: The ability to feel emotions, have a subjective experience, develop a personality, and form a morality.

Sapience: The ability to act rationally, to learn, to understand.

Is the salt vampire a sentient creature? Is it a sapient creature? Must its life be taken, or can it be spared?

I raise the issue because, in a later first season episode, a similar moral question will be raised. In “The Devil in the Dark,” the 25th first season episode to be produced, another indigenous creature is killing humans. We learn that the Horta is acting not out of malice but defense, protecting its offspring. Spock is the only one who pleads for compassion, although Kirk eventually acknowledges the Horta's intelligence. In “The Man Trap,” no one speaks for the creature other than Doctor Crater and the creature itself. It acts not out of malice but survival. We later learn that the creature killed Crater's wife Nancy but, after he began feeding it salt pills, they cohabited peacefully for a year.

The distinction between the two episodes may be when they were written. “The Man Trap” was crafted in the summer of 1966, before any episode had aired, when Roddenberry and his writing staff were still figuring out the Star Trek universe. By the time “The Devil in the Dark” was written by staff writer Gene Coon, everyone had a better handle on what the show was about and the characters' traits.

Let's visit this episode in the context of the creature's perspective.

The first time viewing audiences saw the Enterprise bridge. Spock is in command, and Uhura is at navigation.

The episode opens with the Enterprise in orbit around Planet M-113. This is the first time a viewing audience has seen the ship and its crew. Uhura in a red uniform (remember, in the first two filmed episodes she wore gold) is at the navigation console while an unnamed crewmember (in later episodes, he's Lt. Leslie) is at the helm. Spock is in command. We hear Kirk's voiceover establishing the circumstances. It's interesting that two of the first characters we meet are the ones the network feared — the satanic Vulcan and the female African-American.

Kirk, McCoy, and crewman Darnell beam down to perform a required examination of the Craters. These archaeologists are documenting the remains of a long-lost civilization. Why and how it fell, we're never told. McCoy once had a romance with Nancy, before she married Crater.

“Nancy” walks into their quarters. We later learn this isn't Nancy, but the creature, which has the ability to appear to a person in whatever form is pleasing. (The creature is not a shape-shifter.) To McCoy, Nancy appears as she did when they parted ten years ago. Kirk sees Nancy but older, gray-haired. Darnell sees a “provocative, brassy blonde” according to the script. He says she reminds him of a girl he met on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. Kirk orders Darnell to step outside. Nancy calls McCoy “Plum,” an old affectionate nickname, so clearly the creature can read minds.

Although the civilization was built by the creatures' race, we see no evidence of them. We do see statues of a grotesque. Perhaps the production team didn't want to give away the final reveal, although it would have been nice to see a carving of the creature species.

Nancy says she'll go find Crater. Once outside, Darnell sees her again as the blonde. Nancy seduces him into the ruins.

Crater, meanwhile, is most uncooperative. He demands they deliver salt tablets and leave. Hearing Nancy scream, they run outside and find her (appearing older to everyone) next to the dead Darnell, who becomes the first Enterprise crewmember killed on the show. (A trivia question for your next nerd party …) McCoy declares, “Dead, Jim.” (Bones said “He's dead, Jim” in “The Enemy Within,” referring to the deceased space canine). The ex-Darnell has red circular mottling on his face. Kirk finds a green plant in his mouth. The Craters claim he ate a poisonous Borgia plant. Nancy reminds Kirk and McCoy about their request for salt.

Darnell's remains are beamed up to the ship. In sickbay (called “Dispensary” in the script), McCoy concludes there's no evidence of poisoning. Kirk is in a mood, demands to know what killed his crewmember. McCoy finds the body is missing salt, which Spock finds “fascinating.” (I believe this is the second time he's used the word; the first was in “The Corbomite Maneuver.”) Kirk connects this new evidence to the Craters' requests for salt tablets, and beams down again, this time with Spock and two more sacrificial lambs, er, crewmembers. Although neither wears a red shirt, the creature quickly desalinates both of them.

Crater runs off to find the creature. The creature assumes the appearance of crewman Green. Kirk orders the landing party beamed up, which means the Green-impersonating creature is now aboard the starship.

A couple observations here … The creature is wearing a phaser and holster belt. Did she take it off Green, or is that an illusion too? When the landing party beamed aboard, the creature materializes as Green, but would someone unaffected have seen the creature materialize? Would the yet-to-be-established pattern buffer know it was materializing Green or the creature? Oh well.

The creature, all but starving on M-113, now has a salt buffet from which to feed. Still appearing as Green, it encounters Janice Rand, who has a meal tray with salt and pepper shakers. The creature follows her into Sulu's botany lab(!), never seen again. In the second pilot, where we first met Sulu, he was an astrophysicist. In this episode, Sulu is not only a helmsman but dabbles in botany. In the lab is … well, here's how the script describes it.

The “sentient plant” in Sulu's botany lab.

In the center of the room — obviously one of Sulu's prize pets — is a large, undulating plant, swaying with sentient life and gives off a CHIMING, MELODIC HUM, like a harmonium.

Because it's not affected by the illusions, the plant screeches at the creature's presence and retreats into its nest. (The script once again refers to it as a “sentient plant.”)

The creature flees into the corridor, where it encounters Uhura. Its appearance changes yet again, this time into what the script calls a “Negro Crewman.” (A product of its time.) The creature hypnotizes Uhura and is about to feed, when Rand and Sulu approach to break the spell.

We've seen the creature feed on both men and women, so I guess it's not gender-picky. A lion doesn't ask the gazelle its gender either.

The creature spots a non-descript crewman alone. They exit off-screen. We've seen enough Planet Earth episodes to know how that will end.

Wandering the corridors, the creature stumbles across McCoy's quarters. It changes back into Nancy. “You do care, don't you, Leonard?” Bones is the only one the creature never tries to drain. Is that calculated because McCoy is an asset? Or is it genuine affection? The script doesn't offer a clue. Either way, it suggests this is a cunning creature, more than just an animal hunting on instinct. She persuades him to take a sleeping pill. The creature assumes McCoy's image and heads for the bridge.

Sulu and Janice find the desalinated n.d. crewman. (His name was Barnhart.) The body count is up to four. The secret's out, the creature is aboard. Back on the surface, Kirk and Spock find the ex-Green's body. They capture Crater, who reveals the truth. “She was the last of her kind … the last of its kind.” He compares the creature to Earth's passenger pigeon or buffalo. Kirk declares the difference — “Your creature is killing my people!”

Back aboard the Enterprise, the creature attends a staff meeting as McCoy. It states, “We could offer it salt without tricks. There's no reason for it to attack us.” Crater adds, “The creature is not dangerous when fed.” He argues that the creature is intelligent and needs love as much as humans do. “You bleed too much, Crater,” Kirk replies. Crater admits he can see the creature in its true form but refuses to help Kirk find it. Kirk orders McCoy to take Crater to sickbay for a truth serum injection; Spock accompanies them.

The creature attacks Spock, but fails because Vulcan blood is different. For the first time, we see green Vulcan blood, on Spock's forehead where the creature struck him. (And yet his scar is red …) Crater is dead, desalinated. So much for love and loyalty and all that.

The creature in its true form.

Reverting back into Nancy, the creature returns to McCoy's quarters. Kirk enters; I guess he went looking for the real McCoy, so to speak. The captain offers “Nancy” salt tablets; she can't resist. The creature paralyzes Kirk and is about to feed; McCoy has a phaser but can't pull the trigger. Spock enters (with a ridiculous bandage on his forehead); the creature smites him with one blow. The creature reverts to its true appearance — what the script calls a “beast” and begins to feed on Kirk. Bones shoots the creature; it slumps against the wall, reverts to Nancy, and looks back at McCoy. The creature begs him to spare it, but McCoy finishes it off.

The episode ends with Kirk in the captain's chair, Spock and McCoy at his side. “I was thinking about the buffalo, Mister Spock.” We fade to black.

If this episode had been written a year later, maybe even six months later, perhaps the ending would have been different. The creature could have been stunned heavily enough to put it in the brig. It could have been transported to the surface with a lifetime supply of salt tablets. Perhaps a means could have been found to artificially generate salt from the planet's resources. It would have lived out its life, a lonely life, but a full one.

Is it sentient? Is it sapient? Did it have the capacity to restrain its hunting instincts? From what we saw, apparently not, although it did co-exist with Crater for a year so long as salt was available. But it seems to me that it might have been worth the effort to establish a dialogue, perhaps dispatch a science vessel to learn the lost civilization's history from it, keep it company, maybe even clone other M-113 creatures in an attempt to repopulate the species.

Six months or a year later, Spock probably would have advocated for such an alternative. But at this early stage, he doesn't.

That's why we should contrast this with the decisions made in the episode, “The Devil in the Dark,” which we'll visit down the line.

You'll see the salt vampire again. It will show up later this season as Trelane's trophy in “The Squire of Gothos.”

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, “The Man Trap” was the first episode to air. Here are a few random newspaper reviews the next day.

“Star Trek” didn't offer any great moments … and I know how William Shatner must feel after seeing himself in those rushes and then remembering the juicy role as an attorney he had in the defunct “Of the People” (Or was it “For the People?”)

The producers have billed “Star Trek” as science fiction drama and in this respect they have failed. As a competitive series of space adventure for the youngsters in the format of “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” and “Lost in Space,” perhaps “Star Trek” will fare well. But against the earlier science fiction dramas in “Twilight Zone,” “One Step Beyond” or “The Outer Limits,” the new series wouldn't stand a chance.

— John Gardner, South Bend Tribune Amusement Editor

Man has yet to conquer the universe. But man is coming close. NBC's “Star-Trek,” might have the whole thing aced out.

“Star-Trek,” is, frankly, weird. But the costumes and visual effects are right out of the old Frankenstein movies. It's a shocker baby — if you're easily shocked.

The thing takes place on a huge space ship and to keep the thing kosher there are boy-girl relationships and bad guys and good guys. All aboard the same ship. Also bad girls and good girls. Nothing strange about outer space, toots.

William Shatner, a legitimate pro actor, plays the lead. It's easy fantasy. Ray guns anyone?

— Martin Hogan Jr., Cincinnati Enquirer TV Columnist

Another hour-long NBC-TV series, “Star Trek,” a science fiction opus centering around a mammoth space ship, is so absurd that it is almost entertaining, what with a playboy bunny-type waitress. The premiere was a futuristic twist on the old vampire films. The villain, a creature able to change itself into any human form, required salt to survive, and got it by helping itself to the body content of other people, leaving them very deceased. Tune in next week. Whee!

— Rick Du Brow, United Press International

“Star Trek” is the kind of comic strip adventure that is giving science fiction a bad name. It concerned an enormous space ship roaming through the cosmos on a five year inspection tour of our far-out neighbors. Aside from some brilliant camera work and a virtuoso performance by the makeup department this was a tedious and depressing hour.

— Harriet Van Horne, syndicated columnist

The Enemy Within (Episode 05)

The duplicate Kirk appears on the transporter pad.

“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”

— “The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson

It's not much of a walk from Robert Louis Stevenson to Richard Matheson's script for “The Enemy Within.” Eighty years had passed since Stevenson's classic horror novel had been published in the United Kingdom. The dichotomy of the human psyche has long been fertile fodder for writers. Stevenson and Matheson are only two in a long lineage of writers to explore humanity's capacity for both good and evil, probably going back to the origin of storytelling. The first principle of storytelling is that drama comes out of conflict. What better conflict than with oneself?

Richard Matheson was a veteran writer in the media of speculative fiction magazines and novels, television, and films. He was part of Rod Serling's stable of screenwriters, authoring sixteen episodes for The Twilight Zone in its original run. Two of those episodes cast William Shatner — “Nick of Time” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Because of the show's anthology format, neither time did he know Shatner would be cast, but with Star Trek that was different. He was writing a script knowing who would be playing his protagonist and that actor's skills.

William Shatner in Richard Matheson's “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Video source: The Twilight Zone YouTube channel.

As discussed in earlier articles, Gene Roddenberry's earliest concept for Star Trek was that each episode would be a report or recollection by the captain of a particular past incident. Scripts would be captain-centric. In his prior series, The Lieutenant, scripts were centered on the eponymous Marine Corps lieutenant, William Tiberius Rice. It would be the same with Star Trek — tales about the captain, a riff on the Horatio Hornblower novels. Other Star Trek actors would not have their moment in the spotlight until later in the series.

A 2009 interview with Richard Matheson about his work on Star Trek and other 1960s network television. Video source: Television Academy Foundation YouTube channel.

Matheson wrote only one Star Trek episode. In a 2009 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Matheson said he was unhappy with the producers adding the “B-story” about the landing party trapped on the planet surface. His script was all about the bifurcated Kirk. Matheson told the Academy, “I hate B-stories. To me, they slow a story down.” Matheson noted that Roddenberry recruited the top science fiction writers in town to develop scripts, but in the end concluded it was better to develop his own stable of writers. Matheson recalled, “I submitted other ideas but they never accepted them.” And so one of the most prolific and talented television writers of his time has only one Star Trek episode on his curriculum vitae.

The story takes place basically in two locations — on planet Alfa 177, and on the Enterprise. The first three regular season episodes produced so far all lacked a grand scope, narrowly focused perhaps to keep costs down while the production team figured out how to deliver an episode on time and on budget. Recall that the episodes did not air in production order. Although this was the third episode produced, it was the fifth to air. The two before it did not air until after this one; the earliest aired episodes have yet to be produced.

“The Enemy Within” begins with the landing party on the surface. Kirk's gold uniform is missing its delta logo insignia. In those early days, the costume department had a problem with the uniforms shrinking after every wash, so it may have been the logo wasn't replaced after washing. Or he's the captain and can wear whatever he wants. 😊

Sulu is holding a small dog costumed in an outfit to make it appear that it's an alien creature. I sure hope they fed it a lot of dog chow for putting up with that costume.

“Geological Technician Fisher” falls off a rock and cuts his hand. He's covered with a magnetic golden ore. Kirk tells Fisher to beam up and report to Sickbay.

Fisher beams up, but the transporter definitely doesn't like it. Scotty thinks it's a burnout.

Kirk then beams up, and stumbles dizzy off the pad. (And still missing his insignia.) Scotty escorts Kirk out of the room, despite the captain's warning not to leave the transporter unattended. (Boy howdy, will that happen a lot in future episodes …) As soon as they leave the room, the transporter comes on by itself, materializing a duplicate Kirk — the Hyde to our Jekyll. The script apparently referred to him as “Negative Kirk.”

Voilà, we have Star Trek's first transporter malfunction. But most certainly not the last.

This raises all sorts of questions that Gene Roddenberry probably would rather we not ask. How can the transporter create two objects out of one? Where did the matter come from to create a second person? If the transporter disassembles you and reassembles you as you were, then where'd the matter come from to create a second you?

If the transporter is simply a glorified copier machine, then the original you is destroyed and a duplicate made from some reservoir of raw matter. That would explain where the second person came from, but it also means that using the transporter is a death penalty.

This is why some writers (including me) prefer the term “speculative fiction” to “science fiction.” Speculative fiction is more of a “what if?” with less strict scientific rigor than science fiction. The latter requires a scientific explanation for how something works. The former just shows that it does.

I heard Star Trek writer DC Fontana once say that we don't need to explain how the phaser works. It simply does. Technobabble did not become a “thing” until The Next Generation.

Kirk's captain's log is a report from the future about what we are witnessing now. This was an early concept of how the logs would work — a recollection of past events.

“Positive Kirk” now has his logo insignia. In his quarters, he finds Yeoman Rand, who delivers the ship's manifest. Kirk dismisses her, but this foreshadows what's about to come.

Scotty informs Positive Kirk and Spock that the transporter created two versions of the space dog — except it's not a duplicate, it's “an opposite.” The rest of the landing party can't beam up.

At this point in the series, we've yet to see a shuttlecraft. Perhaps this episode led the producers to realize the Enterprise would have a Plan B if the transporter were down.

Negative Kirk shows up in Sickbay, also now sporting his insignia. He demands Saurian brandy from McCoy, further establishing a precedent going all the way back to “The Cage” that the captain drinks with the ship's doctor. This is the first mention of the alcoholic beverage.

The captain drinks on the job.

Wandering the corridors gulping from the brandy bottle, Negative Kirk slips into Rand's quarters. What happens next is, in my opinion, the most disturbing scene in the three years of the original series.

In her 1998 autobiography, Grace Lee Whitney describes it as “the rape scene.” Without his positive side to suppress his animal instincts, Negative Kirk assaults and pins down Janice on the floor. Grace saying “No!” appears to have been dubbed because her lips don't move. It's a brutal scene, painful to watch. Grace wrote that filming the scene left her with several bruises, because she did her own stunt work.

In earlier articles, we noted the early concept was that Kirk and Rand were attracted to one another, but suppressed it out of duty. In that sense, the scene acknowledges that Kirk feels an attraction just as much as Rand does. Rand may love Kirk, but what the opposite does isn't an expression of love. Rape is all about power and submission.

Rand reports the assault to Spock and McCoy, with Positive Kirk present. Grace wrote that, just before the scene, William Shatner stepped from behind the camera and slapped her without permission to shock her and make her cry. Two days had passed since filming the rape scene, so this assault was to put her back into the moment. Grace acknowledges the act delivered the desired performance but, in my opinion, there's no excuse for hitting someone without permission. Grace seems forgiving, which says more about her than it does Shatner.

Of greater significance is that the scene foreshadows what will happen to Grace during the filming of “Miri.” As noted in our last article, Grace was sexually assaulted for real by one of the show's executives after filming ended on a Friday night.

In his series These Are The Voyages, author Marc Cushman wrote that the rape scene was in Richard Matheson's original draft. The scene was most important to Matheson, who said, “What else could we show about this side of the Captain that would be more frightening?” Roddenberry worried that NBC censors might reject the scene.

Rand receives no counseling. Spock simply dismisses her. Sure, he's a Vulcan so maybe he's insensitive to her suffering, but still one would think that McCoy would advise counseling, therapy, a safe companion escort back to her quarters, etc.

“Negative” Kirk assaults Janice Rand.

In any case, Spock deduces that an imposter is aboard. Negative Kirk can be identified by scratches Rand left on his face, but in the captain's cabin Negative Kirk finds facial makeup he uses to hide the scratches. Why would Kirk have something like that?! Would our heroic captain have makeup for covering a zit?! Seems a bit odd.

Knowing the evil one is loose, why not station a guard in front of Rand's cabin? Might he not try again?

The landing party is slowly freezing to death … I understand Richard Matheson's point about the B-story being a distraction, but it did give George Takei and the extras some work and a paycheck. Producer Robert Justman complained in a memo that the landing party subplot was costing the production time and money, so he may have agreed with Matheson.

Negative Kirk clobbers a crewman and steals his phaser. Positive Kirk and Spock search Engineering for the opposite … Remember that, in The Wrath of Khan, Kirk said Khan's strategy reflected “two-dimensional thinking”? Well, Negative Kirk hides above them, climbing across the equipment. I guess Kirk's three-dimensional out-of-the-box instincts come from his negative side.

This is the scene that gave birth to the Vulcan nerve pinch. The script called for Spock to strike Negative Kirk on the head with the butt of his phaser. Leonard Nimoy felt this wasn't something a Vulcan would do. In his memoir I Am Spock, Nimoy wrote that he'd given thought to Vulcan culture and customs. He had decided that they were a touch-oriented society. As such, rather using brute force, Vulcans “were capable of transmitting a special energy from their fingertips. If applied to the proper nerve centers on a human's neck and shoulder, that energy would render the human unconscious.”

Leonard approached director Leo Penn and William Shatner about the concept. Give Bill credit for selling it, because he's the one who came up with the instant collapse. That's how it was filmed, and so a Star Trek staple was born.

Another Star Trek standard is uttered for the first time. Spock and Scott jury-rig the transporter to reassemble the two space dogs into one. The test seems to fail, as the dog beams up deceased. McCoy turns to Positive Kirk and declares, “He's dead, Jim.”

For the first time, Spock records a captain's log, but he identifies himself as the “Second Officer.” If he's the Second Officer, who is Number One?! An early blooper.

Spock hypothesizes that the test failed because the dog was frightened to death. It reacted out of instinct. A human, with his intellect, might understand and survive.

The two Kirks are run through the transporter, and our one whole Kirk materializes to take command. His first words are to order the landing party beamed up.

“The Enemy Within” is an early example of Star Trek trying to find itself. Gene Roddenberry and the producers are trying to find the right tone. The actors are trying to find their characters. The writers, all free-lancers, are flying blind. All they have for reference are a showing of the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and a flurry of memos supplementing Roddenberry's 1964 16-page outline. Gene is up all hours of the night rewriting the drafts to align with his vision of what Star Trek should be.

This wouldn't be the last time Star Trek dipped its metaphorical pen into the “evil twin” inkwell. In the Season 2 episode “Mirror, Mirror,” yet another transporter malfunction would give us an entire parallel universe filled with evil duplicates of our characters. In the first season of The Next Generation the episode “Datalore” introduced us to Data's evil android predecessor Lore. TNG's sixth season episode “Second Chances” gave us Will Riker's duplicate Thomas, created years before in a long-forgotten transporter accident.

TNG also gave us the holodeck malfunction, something entirely new to go wrong, but that's for another time.

Mudd's Women (Episode 04)

Gene Roddenberry poses with the three seductive characters in “Mudd's Women.” Image source: Unknown.

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog …

— Opening lyric for “Hound Dog”

Star Trek is remembered for breaking the cultural barriers of the 1960s, but it also reflects the sexual objectification and exploitation of women so common to the time.

Gene Roddenberry, the show's creator, was infamous around Hollywood for his sexual escapades. While married to his first wife Eileen, he had affairs with Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols, both of whom went on to regular roles in the series.

In Roddenberry's original March 11, 1964 sixteen-page outline titled, “Star Trek Is . . .” here's how he described the first pilot's captain's yeoman, then named Colt:

Except for problems in naval parlance, “Colt” would be called a yeowoman; blonde and with a shape even a uniform could not hide. She serves as Robert April's secretary, reporter, bookkeeper, and undoubtedly wishes she could serve him in more personal departments. She is not dumb; she is very female, disturbingly so. (Underline in the original.)

In the 1996 memoir he co-wrote with associate producer Bob Justman, Desilu executive Herb Solow claimed that Roddenberry hired Andrea Dromm to play Yeoman Smith in the second pilot because he wanted “to score with her.” Roddenberry wrote a sexist remark in an April 14, 1966 memo to associate producer Bob Justman that the captain's yeoman has “got some pretty good equipment already.” Apparently this was a reference to Grace Lee Whitney, who had just been hired to play Yeoman Janice Rand.

Solow & Justman wrote later in the book, “The Star Trek women seemed to be mirror images of Roddenberry's sexual desires.”

In her 1998 autobiography, Whitney wrote that she met Roddenberry when he cast her for a pilot called Police Story. After that failed to sell, he requested her for the role of Janice Rand. She drove down to Desilu to meet with him, where he described the yeoman as “the object of [the captain's] repressed desire.”

In her book, Whitney alleged that she was sexually assaulted by an “executive” while filming the episode “Miri.” We'll revisit this incident when we look back at that episode; for now, we'll note that some believe it was Roddenberry, although Grace declined to name her assailant. (Roddenberry died in 1991.)

Whitney was dismissed from the show shortly after the assault, suggesting that the set was a hostile work environment for female actors unwilling to play along. Grace wrote that Gene constantly made, “Passes, innuendoes, double-entendres, the whole nine yards.” If the MeToo movement had been around in 1966, Roddenberry might have lost his show before it premiered.

There were other incidents of sexual hijinks. Justman wrote that Roddenberry used Majel to play a sexually charged prank on a 33-year old associate producer, John D.F. Black. Roddenberry aimed Majel at Black, who was unaware of their ongoing affair, ordering him to interview her for a possible casting role. Majel eased into his lap and began to unbutton her blouse. Roddenberry and and other executives burst in on them to confess to the prank.

Gene Roddenberry and Desilu executive Herb Solow posed with three dancing girls for this gag photo during the filming of the pilot episode, “The Cage.” “Oscar” refers to Desilu president Oscar Katz. Image source: Memory Alpha, originally from the collection of Herb Solow.

The reason I bring up all this is that it reflects Roddenberry's attitude towards women, and may explain why “Mudd's Women” is so blatantly sexist.

The episode's premise traces back to the 1964 outline, a pitch idea called “The Women”:

Duplicating a page from the “Old West”; hanky-panky aboard with a cargo of women destined for a far-off colony.

This might have been crossed with another premise, “The Venus Planet”:

The social evolution process here centered on love — and the very human male members of our crew find what seems the ultimate in amorous wish-fulfillment in the perfectly developed arts of this place of incredibly beautiful women. Until they begin to wonder what happened to all the men there.

In “Mudd's Women,” Mudd gives the women a “Venus pill” to temporarily restore their illusion of youthful beauty.

As we discussed in the blog article about “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “Mudd's Women” was one of three story ideas selected between Desilu and NBC as the premise for the second pilot.

The script was farmed out to Stephen Kandel, a 39-year old writer who was already a TV veteran, on his way to one of the more distinguished writing careers in Hollywood. Kandel took the premise from Roddenberry's “The Women” and added a character he envisioned as an “interstellar con man hustling whatever he can hustle; a lighthearted, cheerful, song-and-dance man version of a pimp.” Roddenberry envisioned more of a “swashbuckling” character. Kandel went off to write the script, which Roddenberry kept rewriting. Kandel's illness, coupled with the carnal overtones of the premise, led Desilu and NBC to proceed with “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as the second pilot.

But the script was written, so it was selected as the second episode to be produced. Roddenberry took story credit, while Kandel was credited with the teleplay.

The 1964 outline specified the duties of the Enterprise crew. Among them were:

Any required assistance to the several earth colonies in this quadrant, and the enforcement of appropriate statutes affecting such Federated commerce vessels and traders as you might contact in the course of your mission.

The “Mudd's Women” premise clearly falls into the latter category. We tend not to think of the Enterprise as a patrol car, but that's the role it plays in this episode. Recall that Gene Roddenberry was a Los Angeles police officer while he built his early writing career.

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The teaser opens with a captain's log, “USS Enterprise in pursuit of an unidentified vessel.” It almost sounds like a line from Adam-12.

Kirk asks Spock if it's an “Earth ship.” At this early point in the series, we still don't have the Federation or Starfleet. The craft is not transmitting a “registration beam,” the space version of a license plate. The ship doesn't respond to Enterprise hails. In my law enforcement years, we called this failure to yield. Just as sometimes happens in police pursuits, the pilot flees in blind panic, ignoring the imminent danger of crashing into something (in this case, asteroids).

After the cargo ship loses power, Kirk orders that Enterprise shields be extended to protect the disabled craft from space rocks. Enterprise burns out all but one of its “lithium crystals.”

Harry Mudd and his three women are beamed aboard. Scott and McCoy admire the women the way a lion admires a gazelle. The women pose and preen as if delighted to be objectified. As they're escorted through the corridors, the mouths of male crew members hang agape. Fred Steiner's musical score sounds like what we might hear during a strip tease at a seedy gentleman's club. Camera angles focus on first their derrières and then their torsos. It's almost as if we're watching a cattle auction.

Mudd comments to Spock, “Men will always be men, no matter where they are.” Apparently the Enterprise has no gay or bisexual crew members, but then this is 1960s network television …

With only one damaged lithium crystal left, the Enterprise heads for Rigel XII, a lithium mining planet. The last crystal fails; the ship limps along on battery power. While en route, Kirk holds a hearing the way an arraignment might be held for our arrested traffic stop evader. Harry says he's taking the women to Ophiucus III for “wiving settlers,” the future version of mail-order brides. He claims that the women were recruited, which the ship's lie detector doesn't dispute.* According to Mudd, the women are “to be the companions for lonely men, to supply that warmly human touch that is so desperately needed.” The women confirm his story; they seek escape and companionship too.

The lie detector confounds Harry Mudd. Where have we heard that voice before? See the footnotes.

Harry hatches a scheme (in front of two security officers) to free himself. Somehow one of the women manages to purloin a communicator, which Mudd uses to contact the Rigel XII miners. (Wouldn't the transmission have to route through Uhura?) When the ship arrives, barely capable of sustaining orbit, Kirk offers to “pay an equitable price.” (Apparently money is still in use, or some equivalent.) One of the miners, Ben Childress, says he prefers a swap — the crystals for the women, and the release of Harry Mudd. Kirk replies, “No deal.” Childress replies that the crystals are so well hidden, Kirk will never find them.

Considering Mudd's infractions are relatively insignificant, it seems like a no-brainer, especially with the ship's decaying orbit. (We'll overlook the physics of orbital mechanics for this episode …) Beam up Harry after the crystals are obtained. Oh well.

The ship reduces life support to conserve energy, but they still have the power to beam down the miners, Mudd, and the women to Rigel XII. Seems to me Kirk could have kept them all aboard until the ship starts to spiral in, so they can die with everyone else. Oh well. The Vulcan Mind Meld™ has not yet been invented, but if this were a second season episode Spock could have torn it from Childress's mind. There are always possibilities.

Eve has enough of it. “Why don't you run a raffle and the loser gets me?!” She runs out of the shelter into the magnetic storm. Childress eventually finds Eve and takes her to his quarters.

The Venus drug begins to wear off. Childress calls her “homely” and claims he has enough money to “buy queens.” Kirk and Mudd burst in. Childress is angry to learn the three women are imperfect. Eve takes another pill to restore her beauty — only it's a placebo. Kirk replaced Harry's pills with a colored gelatin. The lesson, Kirk tells us, is to believe in yourself. Eve chooses to remain with Childress, while Kirk takes Mudd and the lithium crystals back to the Enterprise.

As the episode closes, a joking McCoy gestures that Spock's heart is behind the left rib cage — where his liver should be, as we'll learn in the future.

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I understand this episode is a product of its time. It's meant to be playful, to appeal to an immature male demographic. But for a show that aired Thursday nights at 8:30 PM opposite family programming such as My Three Sons and Bewitched, it certainly was an odd choice. Mudd is peddling the 23rd Century version of mail-order brides. He's little more than an “intergalactic trader-pimp” as Herb Solow described him.

According to some accounts, NBC was nervous about using this script for the second pilot, but that was to produce a film they could show advertisers. Now that the show was sold and on the air, morals seem to have shifted. Advertisements ran in local newspapers across the United States during the week before the episode aired on October 13, 1966, with photos showing the “male order brides.” NBC played up the chauvinistic overtones of the episode.

Advertisements promoting the “male order brides” were printed in local newspapers across the United States in the week before it aired. Image source: Binghamton, New York Press, October 8, 1966 via Newspapers.com.

Mudd's women can be considered a metaphor for young female actors who come to Hollywood, seeking escape from a hopeless life, dreaming of a glamorous future. These women are vulnerable, and unscrupulous producers know that. The “casting couch” was around long before Harvey Weinstein. Harry Mudd can be viewed as one such predator, although he doesn't partake himself in the abuse. In any case, the better lesson to have been taught by this episode would be for the women to find their independence and self-esteem, but this was the 1960s, when such a message was rare on network television.

For all the praise we give Star Trek's progressivism, Roddenberry — like all of us — had his hypocrisies. This was the man who wrote a strong female character, Number One, for the first pilot, “The Cage.” Although Gene claimed over the years that the character was dropped because NBC didn't want a strong woman on the bridge, Solow & Justman wrote it was because everyone knew Gene had cast his mistress; it wasn't a question of Majel's talent, it was the conflict of interest.

In both pilots, the female crew members wore trousers like the males. But when Star Trek went to series, the women now wore mini-skirts and go-go boots. They served largely in passive subservient roles.

Once Star Trek went to series, it suffered a shift in tone for most women portrayed in the episodes. “Mudd's Women” was the emphatic statement that gender equality went only so far in the Star Trek universe. Only one female crew member, Uhura, has lines in this episode; the only other female crew member we see is a brief shot of an extra in a corridor as Mudd and his women are escorted to Kirk's quarters. We're otherwise led to believe that the Enterprise is crewed by a complement of rutting men.

Yvonne Fern, Herb Solow's wife, published in 1994 a book titled, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation. The book was a collection of conversations she had with Gene (and Majel) in the months before he passed in 1991. On pages 101-102, Gene discusses the affairs he had with women outside his marriages. Gene said Majel was aware but, importantly for our insights, he regarded these dalliances as strictly physical, not intimate. In his view, he had done these lonely women a kindness by sharing his body with them. We're reminded of Harry Mudd's claim that he's uniting lonely men with lonely women.

Roddenberry's morality standards are not ours to question. I'm only quoting this to provide an insight to the man who originated this episode's premise that, by today's standards, would be considered chauvinistic. Beautiful women gave him a carnal pleasure. Nothing is wrong with that; in the 1960s Roddenberry was not alone in exploiting the female form, for network ratings or for some more personal ambition.

But one cannot hold up Star Trek as a crucible for examining the human condition without noting that it carved out an exception for the female gender.**

Some lexicon notes:

• As in the last episode, Uhura still wears a gold uniform.
• Mudd describes Spock as “half Vulcainian.” “Vulcan” is not yet in use as an adjective.
• The ship is still powered by “lithium” crystals. “Dilithium” is not yet a thing.

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* Majel Barrett debuts in the series as the voice of the ship computer — in this instance, the lie detector. She'll return on-screen in episode 10, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

** Susan Denberg, who played Magda in this episode, apparently posed for a Playboy magazine pictorial around this time. The photos appeared in the August 1966 issue. It may be no more than an interesting coincidence, but should be noted.

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Sources:

David Alexander, Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry (New York: ROC Books, 1994)

Yvonne Fern, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)

Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York: Pocket Books, 1996)

Grace Lee Whitney with Jim Denney, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy (Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books, 1998)

The Corbomite Maneuver (Episode 03)

NBC was so nervous about Spock's satanic look that his eyes were rounded and his eyebrows curved in a promotional brochure. Image source: StarTrek.com.

Previously on The Written Trek …

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In February 1966, NBC notified Desilu that the network would buy the show. Roddenberry had about six months to start producing weekly episodes. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” would air as the third episode, on September 22, 1966, with a few editing changes. It bought the production team some time. Waste not.

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After the second pilot sold and Star Trek went to series, the NBC sales department prepared an “advance information” brochure for affiliates to help them understand the series. A copy is available on The Invisible Agent blog. Fearing that the network and its sponsors would be targeted by religious zealots because of Spock's vaguely satanic appearance, the sales department airbrushed Spock's ears and eyebrows to make him appear more human. Even though Gene Roddenberry had convinced the network to let him keep Spock, the implication was to downplay his presence, at least for now.

Producing a pilot is child's play compared to a series. A pilot is just one episode. Now NBC wanted a minimum of thirteen episodes, with production starting in June.

We wrote in earlier blog articles about the budgets for the two pilots. “The Cage” was budgeted at $451,503 but ended up costing $615,751. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was budgeted at $215,644, but ended up costing $354,974. For the series, Star Trek was budgeted for $180,000 per episode, with a guaranteed thirteen-episode minimum from NBC, or about a half-season. Yes, the sets had been built, costumes had been sewn, and visual effects had been filmed. But those were for one-shot pilots. Now Roddenberry and his production team had to reproduce the quality of those pilots for a weekly series.

More of everything was needed. More producers. More actors. More writers. More effects. Why, we might even boldly go on location. There's a weird-looking geological formation in the Antelope Valley called Vasquez Rocks we might want to use some day. All within budget.

The sets were at Desilu's Culver City lot. The Enterprise bridge and other sets had to be disassembled and moved to the Desilu Hollywood lot, adjacent to the Paramount Pictures lot on Melrose Avenue near Gower Street. In upcoming months, Paramount would be sold to Gulf+Western, which in 1967 would buy out Desilu to combine the two lots into Paramount Television. Star Trek would ride the wave, one small starship caught in a typhoon of corporate acquisitions.

Perhaps the genius of this time was that Roddenberry chose to hire not simply television writers, but experienced literary science fiction writers. If they had TV experience, great. Most did not. They were great idea people, but many were inexperienced with TV story structure and budgets. Gene updated his “Star Trek Is …” outline into an interim document he could give to prospective directors and writers to help them understand his fledgling universe.

David Alexander's Star Trek Creator, the authorized Roddenberry biography, gives some insight into this ever-evolving “Writer-Director Information Guide.” This second version was first issued March 15, 1966, but would be appended many times in upcoming months.

Concerned about plagiarism lawsuits, Roddenberry on March 22 wrote to Desilu executive Bernie Weitzman that, “Obviously, we intend to purchase SF originals wherever they are usable and ride herd on our writers in this area as much as we can …” but warned that “sf is a very strange breed of cat” so the studio should be prepared for plagiarism charges.

An example of a purchased story is the first season episode “Arena” which was based on a 1944 short story by Fredric Brown that was published in the October 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. We'll revisit the original story and its Star Trek adaptation later in our blog series.

Roddenberry used the Guide to flesh out his cast of characters for his writers. The Guide was supplemented by additional memos and revisions in the months ahead; as writers submitted early drafts of their scripts, Roddenberry realized he needed to clarify certain character traits.

Of particular interest is that the “Captain's Yeoman” was initially envisioned as a more prominent character than she eventually became. The character's name changed again. In the first pilot, she was J.M. Colt. In the second pilot, she was Yeoman Smith, played by a different actor. For the series, she became Janice Rand, portrayed by Grace Lee Whitney.

Kirk, Spock, and Janice Rand in an early publicity photo. Image source: Starfleet.ca website.

Alexander cites an April 14 memo in which Roddenberry suggests that the “Captain's Yeoman” carry some sort of recording device “via which she can take log entries from the Captain at any time …” This idea evolved into the tricorder, which Roddenberry described as “an electronic recorder-photographer, an instrument of the future whereby wherever the Captain is, can make log reports or records of any kind or type, which later are fed into the ship's computer system as a part of the Captain's regular log.“

The captain's log was about to become a Star Trek staple. In a May 2 memo, Roddenberry amended the Guide again, detailing the script format he wanted. The teaser (the scene before the opening credits) should open with the captain's log. “Captain Kirk's Voice Over opens the show, briefly setting where we are and what's going on.” While “not mandatory,” Roddenberry preferred that each of the four acts begin with a log update. “Not only does it give Star Trek a 'trade mark,' but also helps us get past exposition fast and into dramatic action.”

The yeoman character diminished over time, with Grace Lee Whitney eventually leaving the show. Perhaps Roddenberry realized that the captain was perfectly capable of recording his own logs, thank you very much. so the yeoman was no longer needed. Whitney's departure and the elimination of the yeoman character will be discussed in a future blog entry.

Spock also needed a lot of clarification, not only for the writers but also for Leonard Nimoy. In the teaser for “The Corbomite Maneuver,” the first episode to be filmed, Spock still barks orders like a British naval officer, just as he did in the second pilot. Nimoy wrote in his autobiography, I Am Spock, that he viewed “Corbomite” as “a crossover episode, where I was still learning to play the role. At some moments I grasped it; at others, I didn't.”

But he also cited this episode as the first time he had a “revelation of sorts” about how to play Spock. There's a scene where the bridge crew gawk with trepidation at the alien ship Fesarius on the view screen. The script gave Spock one line to say. But Nimoy didn't have a handle on how to say it. Director Joe Sargent advised, “When you deliver your line, be cool and curious, a scientist.”

And that's how Leonard Nimoy's Spock said on screen for the first time the word, “Fascinating.”

Perhaps more than any other character on the show, Spock would significantly evolve not only over the three years of the series, but through the animated series into the six original-cast Star Trek films, a guest appearance on The Next Generation, and even two supporting roles in the “Kelvin timeline” movies of the early 21st Century.

Fascinating.

Roddenberry sent out another memo on May 2 detailing Spock's character. His mother was human. His father was not. Depending on the source you look at, the father's race was “a native of another planet,” Vulcan, or Vulcanian. The NBC sales brochure said that Spock was Vulcanian, from the planet Vulcanis! Roddenberry wrote that Spock was “biologically emotionally, and even intellectually a 'half-breed.'” (The term was not considered offensive at the time.) Spock was “a devout vegetarian,” a trait that seemes to have been all but forgotten in future incarnations.

In our earlier blog articles, we discussed how both pilots took an interest in mental powers, and speculated whether or not Roddenberry believed such things exist. In any case, Gene wrote in this memo that, “Hypnotism is an everyday tool on Spock's home planet … It forms a part of their economic, social, and sex life.” In fact, Gene wrote that hypnosis was needed “as a part of the sex act …” Um, okay. But Roddenberry did write that Spock should use these abilities rarely, maybe recognizing that it could become an easy-out for a writer who's written himself into a corner.

Roddenberry also foresaw a unique relationship between Spock and Rand, who had “a motherly instinct for lonely men” which might explain her character in the episode “Charlie X.” More about that when we reach that episode. In any case, this “motherly” trait would be reflected in several early episodes where Rand nurtures Kirk in times of stress.

“The Corbomite Maneuver” was written by Jerry Sohl, an experienced television writer and science fiction novelist, the perfect résumé for Roddenberry. Sohl had already written for speculative fiction shows such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Several of Sohl's works can be found on Internet Archive, such as The Altered Ego written in 1955.

A draft version of this episode's script is available on the UK-based TV Writing website. It's entitled, “Second Revised Final Draft May 20, 1966.” According to the Memory Alpha website, a few minor revisions were made after this draft, then filming began four days later on May 24, 1966.

The second page lists the cast. It's interesting that, after Kirk and Spock are listed, “Yeoman Janice Rand” is third, ahead of regulars McCoy, Sulu, Scott, and Uhura. The navigator, Lt. Bailey, has a full name — “Dave Bailey.”

In our look at “Where No Man Has Gone Before," we noted that the unaired version of that pilot contained clips that were unused when the episode was converted for broadcast. The ending credits don't give the names of the supporting characters, only their job titles, although Sulu and Scott are named in the episode. In the script for “The Corbomite Maneuver,” James Doohan's character is listed as “Scott (Engineering Officer).” Sulu is just “Sulu” with no job title. Nichelle Nichols' character is listed as “Uhura (Communications Officer).” Kirk, Rand, and Doctor McCoy received first names. The others would would come later, sometimes much later.

The original epilogue and closing credits for “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Several supporting characters do not have names, only job titles. Video source: Tales from SYL Ranch DARKROOM YouTube channel.

As he did with Majel Barrett, Roddenberry also had an affair with Nichelle Nichols. The romance began after her appearance on The Lieutenant. In her autobiography, Beyond Uhura, Nichelle wrote that Gene told her about his plans for Star Trek; if it went to series, “I think there will be something important in it for you.” Nichols clarified that “our relationship was over long before Star Trek began,” and that no one at the show knew about the past romance other than Majel. The studio and network already were uncomfortable with Gene's relationship with Majel; an affair with another female cast member wouldn't help. The bond between Majel and Nichelle would have its own symbolism when Majel returned to the series in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” More about that in a future blog entry.

Sohl's teaser page opens with a quote. This is the only time I've seen a TV script open with a quote that's not part of the script. It reads:

“Whereso'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new.”
(Samuel Johnson)

When the episode aired, the teaser opened with a camera shot looking down from overhead at the bridge. This wasn't in the script, at least in Sohl's May 20 version. Whomever came up with this idea was genius, because it established for the first-time viewer the bridge layout. We've seen the two pilots, but the NBC audience has not. In the end, it would have been director Joe Sargent's call, so I'll give him credit for it.

The teaser shot establishing the bridge layout. This angle was rarely used in future episodes.

Kirk isn't here. We see the command chair is empty. Spock is in charge, ordering that photographs be taken of this section of the galaxy they're exploring.

Uhura is at Communications. Although we see a background character wearing a red shirt (for the first time), Uhura is wearing gold, not the red with which we'll later become accustomed. Although this was the first episode filmed, it was the tenth to air. One has to wonder if audiences wondered why Uhura had changed her uniform red to gold for the week.

Another noticeable costume difference is that Uhura, Rand, in fact all female crew members are wearing short skirts. The trousers worn by women in the first two pilots are gone. By the mid-1960s, miniskirts had become a fashion trend, first in the United Kingdom and then later in the United States. One can speculate that's why female cast members wore short skirts, but more likely it's because Roddenberry and the network wanted the show to appeal to the young male demographic who were the core of science fiction fandom. Scantily clad women were a staple of “sci-fi” magazines for decades. Women were still sex objects in the 23rd Century, at least so far as 1960s Star Trek was concerned.

Back to our story … The ship encounters a mysterious revolving luminescent cube, later determined to be a buoy. Kirk is summoned to the bridge, then we fade to the opening credits. For the first time, audiences hear what was to become perhaps the most famous opening narrative in television history:

Space . . . the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its five-year mission:

. . . to explore strange new worlds . . .
. . . to seek out new life and new civilizations . . .
. . . to boldly go where no man has gone before.

The narrative helped to explain to novice audiences what the show was about. Considering both studio and network executives struggled with understanding the two pilots, it's understandable that the powers-that-be would fret that viewers might not “grok” it.

As discussed in our October 17, 2024 blog entry, the credit for this narrative belongs to several people.

According to Bob Justman and Herb Solow in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, associate producer John D.F. Black came up with “Space, the final frontier.” “Where no man has gone before” was lifted from the second pilot's title, written by Samuel Peeples. The final version emerged from a series of memos exchanged in early August 1966 between Roddenberry, Justman, and Black. It was recorded by William Shatner on August 10, 1966, about a month before the first aired episode.

Act One begins with the first captain's log and stardate. Here's how it appeared in Sohl's second revised draft:

Captain's log, at Star Date 1512 point 2, on our third day of star mapping, an unexplained cubicle object blocked our vessel's path. On the bridge, Mister Spock immediately ordered general alert. My location, sick bay, quarterly physical check.

It's not quite what would later become familiar to us, in particular the use of past tense to describe events that have already happened.

Desilu executive Herb Solow wrote in Inside Star Trek that the stardate concept originated from a recommendation he made to Roddenberry:

The voyages of the Enterprise have already taken place; all Star Trek adventures are already history. The captain is setting up and recounting the particular adventure. He clues in the viewer very quickly as to what is going on and where, so we don't have page after page of boring exposition.

As for the number, the stardates would make little sense once episodes aired out of production order. Roddenberry later rationalized this by noting that travel at relativistic speeds, and in particular beyond the speed of light, meant our starship might be experiencing a different time than elsewhere. An adequate rhetorical fig leaf.

You'll also note that, in this episode, for the first time all male officers have pointed sideburns. That came from a May 1966 Roddenberry memo in response to concerns that actors would have contemporary haircuts. The pointed sideburns were to suggest a future style. Roddenberry wrote, “This is mandatory for all actors appearing in our show.”

In the sickbay, Kirk has his shirt off for the first (and most certainly not the last) time. We meet Dr. Leonard McCoy, played by DeForest Kelley, the actor Roddenberry wanted all along for the ship's doctor.

For the first time, McCoy uses the rhetorical device of self-comparison, which was to become another Star Trek trope. McCoy says, “What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?” In Sohl's May 20 draft, the line ended, “… or a trolley car conductor?”

Kirk summons “department heads” to the bridge, as he did in the second pilot. This is the first time McCoy is on the bridge, a pattern that conveniently allows him to kibbitz in this and future episodes, invited or not.

After destroying the cube, Kirk orders drills and retires to his quarters. For the first time, and most certainly not the last, McCoy tags along. We see a scene reminiscent of “The Cage,” when Dr. Boyce counseled Captain Pike. In this scene, as in the first pilot, the doctor pours the drink. (Unlike Phil Boyce, Bones doesn't clarify if it's alcoholic.) Rand arrives to serve a salad; Kirk complains about being assigned “a female yeoman,” as did Pike in the first pilot.

When the Fesarius arrives, Kirk identifies his vessel as “the United Earth Ship Enterprise.” Neither the Federation nor Starfleet as terms yet exist. Balok says he's with “the First Federation.” Ted Cassidy, who played the butler Lurch on the recently-cancelled The Addams Family, provided the voice of Balok. Spock comments that Balok is “reminiscent of my father.”

In the second pilot, an episode the audience has yet to see, Kirk defeated Spock at 3D chess. Spock talks of checkmate, but Kirk decides instead to play poker. He bluffs Balok by claiming that the Enterprise is comprised of a substance called corbomite that will reflect back energy on its attacker. This establishes for the viewer a core trait of Kirk — he'll bluff you, he'll take risks.

In the end, Balok's pilot vessel fails and issues a distress call. Kirk orders the Enterprise to respond. He tells a doubting McCoy:

What's the mission of this vessel, Doctor? To seek out and contact alien life, and an opportunity to demonstrate what our high-sounding words mean.

Kirk tells the viewers what the show is about — if they tune in next week.

It's been said that Star Trek is about “making friends of enemies.” In this episode, the first to be filmed, we're given a script that establishes that theme.

Making friends of enemies.

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Sources:

David Alexander, Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry (New York: ROC Books, 1994)

Leonard Nimoy, I Am Spock (New York: Hyperion, 1995)

Nichelle Nichols, Beyond Uhura (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1994)

Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York: Pocket Books, 1996)

Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968, Sixth Printing, July 1970)